Drama Cleansing Thread

On August 24th, Stardock released the long-anticipated PC strategy game Elemental on schedule…

Except, of course, that’s not quite what happened. Stardock released the game a couple days early to beta testers and pre-order customers – the same version reviewers were given (v1.0) and the results were painful in two basic ways:

1. The new engine that Stardock developed turned out to have a lot of compatibility problems resulting in crashing and out of memory errors for a significant percentage (I’d go as far as to say as many as 30% of users – which is a gigantic number – anything over 5% is considered unacceptable). It’s not commonly known but the engine in our previous games (GalCiv II, The Political Machine, etc.) was developed originally in 1997 and enhanced over the years. Nowadays, most companies just license their engine from Gamebryo (Civilization V, Oblivion, Fallout 3) or the Unreal engine. You are now seeing why they do.

2. The above ensured ruinous reviews but even without them, the game UI and some of the game mechanics just didn’t live up to people’s expectations, and AI issues.

The purpose of this blog is to help answer questions so that we can move forward.

So here are some of the questions / comments I’ve gotten in emails and private messages and on various forums that I’ll try to answer:

Q: What is Stardock’s plan for Elemental going forward?

A: For the immediate future we’re going to go down two paths. First, the v1.0x versions will continue to focus largely on compatibility (crashing or weird video issues) as well as bugs and turning on multiplayer.

Then, we will work on v1.1 which will serve as our answer to player feedback. Enhanced AI, improved UI, a tutorial, updated quest system, new magic system, numerous other tweaks. This version will serve as the basis to make a demo version of the game.

Beyond that, we will be looking at player feedback. That will work towards v1.2 (October) and v1.3 (November). Once we are satisfied that the game has met reasonable expectations, we can then focus on the first expansion pack: Elemental: War of Magic – Book 2, Cerena.

Unlike Book 1, which is fairly short because it’s only meant as a kind of introduction (the game is mean to be played in sandbox mode. GalCiv and Sins of a Solar Empire didn’t even include campaigns, we are generally not very pro-campaign-y people as you can gather, campaigns have limited replayability).

Book 2, Cerena is the excuse to introduce more far reaching game mechanic changes and begin to add in the multiplayer modes we have long been thinking of (from custom servers that yes, will work on your LAN that has no Internet connection) to tactical-only modes.

That first expansion pack will be free to everyone who owns the game at the point of v1.3.

Q: Stardock should just put out an expansion and re-release the game as a Director’s Cut.

A: NO. While we do intend to release future new versions of Elemental beyond the War of Magic series, we will not be re-submitting Elemental “patched and fixed” for re-review.

A lot of people seem to think that Stardock knowingly released the game “full of bugs”. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case. As people who have played through the various versions can attest, weird stuff is very machine specific. For instance, the illustrative outline on graphics causes no difference (not even 1 frame) on our test matrix machines and yet results in 20+ frames for others who have, on the surface, similar hardware configurations for us. The PC Gamer UK reviewer ran into a white tactical battle screen that we had never encountered before (nor had it shown up during the public beta).

The low metacritic score for Elemental (about 3 out of 5 average) needs to serve as a long-term reminder to us and anyone else who might think that you can simply put out a major retail game in 2010 with its own custom engine without a massive massive long-term beta program and a long-term QA process. If you can’t do that, then either license your engine or don’t expect people to shell out $50.

Put another way, the blistering feedback on Elemental: War of Magic should serve as a scarlet letter to make us “never forget”. So no, no re-launch of Elemental: War of Magic. It is, what it is.

For fans who are disheartened, look at on the bright side. We will be able to see how much effect word of mouth is. If we do a good job making the game live up to its potential and expectations, then we can see what effect that has on sales. And we plan to share those details with you.

As it stands today, Elemental has sold approximately 82,000 copies.

Q: I heard Stardock is laying off people, I thought your non-games revenue funded the games team.

A: It does. It funds ONE games team. But Stardock has been hiring up across the board to build a second studio. Only Elemental can fund that. “Stardock” is made up of 3 groups: Enterprise software (our #1 revenue source), Consumer software (Object Desktop, Fences, etc.) and Consumer Entertainment (the games). That’s not counting Impulse which is a separate, profitable entity that doesn’t get affected one way or the other by the success of the games or the enterprise software.

Q: Brad Wardell: You should just kill yourself! [I actually did get this]

Q: Brad Wardell – you have a martyr complex! You always take personal blame for everyone! Get off your cross! [yes, got this too]

A: That is my job. If you’re going to spend years railing about CEOs not taking responsibility when something goes wrong, it would be the height of hypocrisy for me not to take responsibility when things go badly on a launch.

In addition, some of the issues are directly related to my specific decisions.

Q: Your act is getting old. Fool me once on Demigod, fool me twice, shame on me! [got this too in various forms]

A: The Demigod debacle ultimately resulted from a fundamental communication failure between the publisher (Stardock) and the developer (Gas Powered Games). It took us a long time to figure out exactly how the connectivity issue occurred (i.e. many months). Ultimately, and sadly, it boiled down to a miscommunication. When you host a game in Demigod (even now), you are given a dialog for your port #. It was believed by the Stardock team that Demigod handled direct IP connections and thus its raknet based port system would only be used when that failed. GPG, by contrast, thought Stardock was handling direct connections too. It turned out that that port # part (even now) doesn’t have a function and so 100% of connections attempts when to the Raknet system which overwhelmed it.

The reason why Stardock rightly took the blame is because, as the publisher, we should have looked at the beta tester connectivity logs and seen that 100% of connections were being passed to Raknet for the socket rather than the 10% anticipated. Add tens of thousands of users quickly and bam. A different system had to be developed.

But Demigod didn’t suffer from compatibility issues. It was very solid right out of the gate (for pretty much everyone) and was an excellent game on day 1. GPG did a great job making a great game. And Stardock did do a good job making a good backend. But one miscommunication between developers resulted in disaster. Only a much larger beta test would have discovered the problem. The system wasn’t “buggy”. Not that it does anyone any good now, but at least people can see and learn from what happened.

Point being, the situations are not similar.

With Elemental, the issue is the game itself. With Elemental’s MP, the system works because from day 1, Elemental’s servers are just hosted by Stardock. No P2P.

Q: What do YOU think of Elemental?

A: Elemental is the finest game we’ve ever released. Ever. At least, that's what I thought on the day we released it. However, I have come to the painful conclusion that we will have to dedicate more effort to making the game live up to the expectations of our customers as a whole. You'd be surprised how easy it is to confuse the enjoyment of making a game to the enjoyment of playing it.

Q: My post was hidden on the forums! I have a right to post my anger!

A: No. No you don’t. Believe me when I say I speak from first hand experience, there are entire forums dedicated to letting people post about their anger about something. The Stardock forums have never ever been some forum of free speech. And they never will be. If you’re looking for that, you should go elsewhere. I’ve been moderating “forums” since my Commodore 64 days as a “Sysop” and “Subop”. A few toxic users can wreck a community.

If someone needs/wants technical support, has a question, has a suggestion, wants to interact with the community, that’s great. Go for it. But if your purpose is to vent your rage on other users, us, the game, small animals, what have you, the moderates are instructed to take a very dim view of that.

After the release of v1.08 (this week) I intend to instruct moderators to be even more stringent on that sort of thing because we (as a community) need the Stardock developers themselves to participate on the forums.

While I have two decades of people telling me that I should kill myself or that <product X> is a “piece of shit” as well as various wishes that I get cancer and die “bleeding from every orifice) (yes, there are people out there that post these things) my development team are just normal people who are excited to talk to gamers who have cool ideas and we’re not going to subject them to haters (and most haters don’t have any idea they’re being hateful). Rule of thumb: Just treat people as if they’re right in front of you.

A: NO. We’re not getting screwed. While some of the review scores do have a bit of “dogpiling” to them (relative to review scores given to other games) I have yet to read a single review that I felt was unfair in terms of the text.

If anything, I feel bad about putting some of my friends through this. It’s no secret that Tom Chick and Troy Goodfellow are friends of mine. The question isn’t how I feel about them criticizing or giving negative reviews of the release version of Elemental. The question is how they felt having to give a negative review of a game of someone who’s their friend? It’s called integrity. I’ll take a 1 friend who will tell it like it is over a 100 yes men.

So when I read the reviews, my first reaction isn’t anger but sorrow at having put people I respect through having to give something I know they were inclined to like and wanted to like through that. It’s also the reason I will not be re-submitting some “patched” version for review.

It also redoubles our collective efforts to live up to the standards we have set. We will be working on Elemental for a long time. We love it. We live it. And together, we will make it awesome.

Now, let’s move past the drama. Let’s do the things that need to be done going forward to have fun and create something that will stand the test of time.

Shame thanks to the various bitchers and whiners now we will get less info since frogs decided to stop doing as many dev journals. All come some asshats had to jump all over him in the latest ones. And people wonder why the majority of businesses NEVER respond to you on their forums...

If it's Spyndel (post#12) that you're calling an asshat, you're just wrong. He wrote one of the most thoughtful posts I have read on this forum, assessing even better the situation than Tridus and Nick-Danger try to describe. It was my first (and last) Beta and I'm just a casual gamer so I didn't post much except for telling "Game X had this right" or giving a few ideas but I had that strange feeling that the Elemental project was not properly managed: ideas came and went without much rationale given (it's still the same it seems), no systematic going through the different features...

It seemed (it still seems to me) that there were no plan about what the game would look like. They put lots of efforts into the engine and the macro civ-like features (economy, city-building) but were oblivion to almost everything else, everything that makes a good fantasy game. As someone said, this game is more like a platform (Sorry, I don't mod either so it doesn't rejoice me). Did they know what their goals were or were they just "Hey, we're gonna make a cool game!" and are running like beheaded chicken since? Did these people, did Brad REALLY play all those past games to tell us he thought Elemental was ready? Perhaps, that's the scariest thing for me, that they just don't understand what they're doing.

Don't tell me that I should try to do better! I'm no CEO, no developer, no coder. But I buy and play games, I know what I like or dislike and I could make some analysis of my past games feature by feature to see what's fun, what isn't, what should, what could. Did they do it at Stardock? Did they have a part of a wall dedicated to MOM, AoW, Dom3 and others with their pros and cons, their plus and minus, and how each game resolved issue X? If not, that's what they should start with right now to 'make surgery'. Taking the time to design what they want, then implement it. But what are we getting? Let me quote Spyndel:

Might I suggest while you're modeling tactical combat after a cartoon, you might slip in playing a few *games* that do grid based tac combat well. You sell a couple in your own Impulse store. See how they handle things like combat speed and initiative, movement, counter attacks, target selection strategy, unit roles and tactical variety , which would in turn grant more desperately needed diversity to the unit design process which the game is built around.

With respect, and with apologies for being grumpy, we've had years now of pie in the sky posts about fluffy conceptual goals based on Tolkien or your favorite anime, that have gotten us to where we are currently at. By your own admission during your recent posts, the dev team had become too enamored with that sort of thing during the dev process, at the expense of basic gameplay. We need nitty gritty, down to basics, fundamental redesign of tactical gameplay based on proven mechanisms that work. Not "I want it to be like Dragonball Z...that show is cool!".

Spot on, Man! We were promised everything and the kitchen sink, we still are, but we have a saying in my language translating as "Pretty promises make fools happy!". When Brad says now "Give us your ideas!", I'm wondering where he has been for a year for many people went to great lenghts to describe and analyze mechanisms, concepts, calculations and such. It's all been said and been largely ignored. If they want what people thought about feature X, a little search and it's all there, there is even threads that compile suggestions. As for me, it usually takes me much time to craft my thoughts into meaningful sentences and posts, I won't repeat myself on something. Let's hope the more knowledgeable here can steer the boat into better waters! I shelve the game for some time.

The only other game that had me spend so much time in his forum pre-release was MoO3. Bad omen!

As for Istari: you just proved why some are afraid. Threatening to ban people for pointing at what we think is the core of the problem is low.

And we don't need "more developer journals" to dream about things that'll never be. We need to talk to developers to help them develop their vision of things before they begin to run to do it.

But I guess it’s easier to shoot the messengers, make some apologies, promise it’s gonna be alright and the game will be good. Good luck then! I shall be waiting to see whether you make it or not.

Brad wasn't talking about making combat like an anime cartoon, just magic effects and aspects of style but some people seem to have it in for anime and freak anytime it's mentioned. People like Spyndel use a subtext of constructive criticism to take personal jabs at the games designers.

This is not a MOO3 Mandelic, that's pretty low, and you haven't given Elemental nearly enough time. Brad spoke to us about the difficulty of developing a new engine and how most companies re-use older game engines. Why won't the complainers factor this into their considerations.

This IS a good game, I've had some great experiences with it already and if we don't kill the dev's enthusiasm for it ,(Which I hope is impossible.), the flaws will be corrected. Hell, Brad is already offering tons of support and a free expansion AND is personally taking the heat for the problems people are having with Elemental and these people still feel the need to whine.

Personally I think there's nothing wrong with acknowledging the games merits and being diplomatic about criticisms. Why does everyone have to be such an intolerant ass these days, are they projecting their frustrations with companies like EA onto Stardock? Don't, Stardock is different and actually cares about games, they simply went in a different direction with Elemental and overlooked in their zeal some of the key traditional aspects that complete the play value of a tbs. They WILL correct this.

Anyway that's my piece for now, all the cynics can rip me a new one now.

I really think that we all got to be thankful for a great game here. I know it has many faults now but like a child it will grow up and be strong.Just be patient and give Stardock the space and faith.Thanks for great game.

actually genius, he created an AI dev journal today, got ripped a new one and said he was done doing Journals for awhile and then locked that journal thread...

Which is why it was suggested that dev journal threads be restricted to current customers only because it's likely the people who have no vested interest in Elemental that are quickest to criticize (because, you know, the rest of us are just blind fanboys or something; least that's what the trolls keep telling me).

If it's Spyndel (post#12) that you're calling an asshat, you're just wrong. He wrote one of the most thoughtful posts I have read on this forum, assessing even better the situation than Tridus and Nick-Danger try to describe.

Unfortunately, whatever merits his comments might have had were undermined by his condescending and patronizing tone. As my dad always says, it's not what you say, it's how you say it.

It seems that the meaning behind this thread title is lost on many. I'm not pointing fingers, or speaking only of posts in this thread. No need for anyone to get defensive. Please keep those minds open.

The CEO of Stardock writes a number of candid postings accepting responsibility for a less than stellar release. Then presents a detailed plan for correction. Elementals lead developer posts a loooong to-do list of fixes. Immediatly after release a series of patches are offered. Stardocks response has been remarkable. What more can you ask. To my knowledge, no other game company even comes close to Stardocks level of support. So why the continued drama?

Stardock admits errors. They make public apologies. They immediatly release a series of patches. They publicly acknowledge fan feedback. And they publish lengthy to-fix lists. Stardock has committed to a timely fixing of the game. And now they rightly ask us to move on and get over the drama already!

To continue pointing out any shortcomings, serves no constructive purpose. If you are on a personal crusade to combat shoddy workmanship... more power to us. But your wasting your time here. Your too late. That battle is won. Stardock says they f'cked up. They're sorry about it. Now they fix it. Wording your criticisms with sarcastic negativity is pouring salt in the wound, your beating a dead horse, your picking at scabs to slow the heal. Don't be an ass. Be helpful and supportive. Say your piece with respect. Be real. Please.

I agree completely. Looking forward to when forums are moderated a little bit more so there is less pointlessly repeating hate being spewed all around.

I agree also. Stardock is the only company I know of that supports their customer base on such a high level. I love this game right now, with the fixes they are doing, it will be amazing ! Killer105, you are right, stop the drama already !

Thanks for the update, but frankly I'm disappointed that the post boils down all of Elemental's problems to compatibility issues and all of Demigod's problems to connectivity issues. The fact of the matter is that the post doesn't address the less tractable issues of major problems in gameplay design, and I'm worried that neither Stardock nor GPG has learned its lesson about the haphazardness of both game's design process.

Let's face it: Demigod is not on the same level as Sins. Elemental still has potential, but the outstanding gameplay issues are still formidable, and my confidence that they will be adequately addressed is starting to flag.

Well, perhaps I should clarify: we can start holding Stardock to a lower standard of quality and be satisfied if they churn out solidly 7.0 to 7.8 games on the Metacritic scale, but it would be shame to not generally expect 8.0 to 9.0+ quality.

"I agree completely. Looking forward to when forums are moderated a little bit more so there is less pointlessly repeating hate being spewed all around.﻿"- killer105

I 2nd this wholeheartedly! I wasn't in on the beta, myself, so I can't judge either way as to the quality of the dev fixes in response to the tester input. Nor can I judge the the quality of the input from most testers, as I know from experience that many times people see it as more of a "try before you buy" opportunity than actually helping in the development process of a game with meaningful purpose.(it varies from game to game, with some genre's lending itself to "bad beta testers" more than others. IE ... MMO's)

What I CAN say is that posting over and over again the equivalent of "I told you so!" or "The game totally stinks and I want a refund!" serves no constructive purpose ... AT THIS POINT.

You may have a "right" to say "I told you so." but it really does nothing to help fix the game now because most posts like that, even if they are right on the money, are so full of sarcasm and hate that it undermines the integrity of the poster.They are purely, self serving, and nothing more.

Likewise, posts demanding for a refund are just pure hate and frustration. While I have empathy for them(and Brad obviously does too or he would have done more to block them) the most constructive route to take for them is through the PROPER CHANNELS, not on a message board to try and get a CEO to see it himself.(if I have a beef with my tax return, I don't send President OBAMA an e-mail. If my Xbox gets an E74 error I don't call Bill Gates. Doing so is just "farts in the wind".) Posting for a refund on a message board is just taking advantage of Stardock having actual Dev's read, and POST, on boards frequented by customers.

Keep a "chin up" their Elemental team ... some of us are giving you a fair chance. And this customer in particular still has faith and is thankful for the integrity you have in your products, and commitment to your customers. Carry on...

Quoting solidsmooky, reply 195You guys ever think that Frogboy didn't respond today because... you know.. it's Labor Day here in America and he's probably with his family? Stop being so dramatic.actually genius, he created an AI dev journal today, got ripped a new one and said he was done doing Journals for awhile and then locked that journal thread...

I am not a serious techie but I am a PC gamer. I am not "plugged in" like most others as far as I can tell with their ipods, texting, social networks, etc. One of the things I have learned about the whole "plugged-in" crowd and IM etiquitte is that there is no way to tell the maturity level of the people you are communicating with(much less the lingo). There really should be some way of people getting some idea who you are communicating with, at least their age. (I am 40). All the people nit-picking this game to death make me sick. It seems like ther are a lot of adolescents and younger who have no idea about life experience. I followed the development journals for along time and it was very interesting. To see the turn of events surrounding the roll-out is tragic, not on Stardock's part, but all the haters out there. Geez! lighten up. This is a great game, and I'm in it for the long haul. The history of Stardock's support and continued enhancements is where I hang my hat.

I honestly feel sorry for the Elemental development team. To work so hard on this, with openness and sincerity, and to be assaulted from all directions, especially after years of supportive dialog with the community in the run-up to to release, is breathtaking.

But keep the chin up Stardock! The haters will slowly disperse, and the core supporters will emerge, and stronger for it.

PS can you make it so that when you create a (sand-box) map that you like, you can start a new game on that same map with a different sovereign?

Much appreciation for owning your mistakes but looking to the future. Diehard Stardock fans will stick with you guys because we know you're going to do it right. As far as I'm concerned GalCiv 2 was the best computer TBS game made to date and I think Elemental will surpass it in time. As for the Kumquat engine - at least once you get the bugs out you'll have another product that game designers might want to lease from you. Thanks for keeping us in the loop.

I really appreciate your honesty and willingness to take responsibility for the current situation Brad. It's the right thing to do and I respect you for it. Your plan for the next few months looks good. And thank you for the free expansion, that is appreciated since you guys were under no obligation to do that and with the bad launch I imagine it's future revenue you could probably use.

Glad to hear surgery is being considered for some of the game mechanics, some of them aren't very good (I mean that in the nicest possible way in the hope of this game being great someday instead of its current mediocre state). I won't go into specifics here since there are already threads and threads about it.

I'd also encourage you to figure out a marketing strategy to get another round of reviews at the time of the first or second expansion so that you can get another round of sales to help you get your fiscal situation back on track, as well as attract more players to the community who will love the game, but are quite understandably staying away due to its current state and all the bad press.

I know it's a labour of love for you guys, as all the best projects are. But that does mean you end up wearing rose-tinted glasses sometimes and reality can give you a rude shock when you least expect it. I'm one of the people disappointed with the current state of the game (not because of the technical issues, but because of the actual gameplay), but I do clearly see a whole world of potential, and if you guys are able to unlock all that potential I think it'll eventually be one of my favourite games of all time. I fully endorse moving forward with the game in a constructive, drama-free way, hopefully it'll actually evolve that way. Best of luck with it.

Quoting dragoaskani, reply 196Quoting solidsmooky, reply 195You guys ever think that Frogboy didn't respond today because... you know.. it's Labor Day here in America and he's probably with his family? Stop being so dramatic.actually genius, he created an AI dev journal today, got ripped a new one and said he was done doing Journals for awhile and then locked that journal thread...You can still stop being so boring and dramatic.

Quoting solidsmooky, reply 214Quoting dragoaskani, reply 196Quoting solidsmooky, reply 195You guys ever think that Frogboy didn't respond today because... you know.. it's Labor Day here in America and he's probably with his family? Stop being so dramatic.actually genius, he created an AI dev journal today, got ripped a new one and said he was done doing Journals for awhile and then locked that journal thread...You can still stop being so boring and dramatic.And you can quit being a complete bitch. Bitch.

Quoting dragoaskani, reply 219Quoting solidsmooky, reply 214Quoting dragoaskani, reply 196Quoting solidsmooky, reply 195You guys ever think that Frogboy didn't respond today because... you know.. it's Labor Day here in America and he's probably with his family? Stop being so dramatic.actually genius, he created an AI dev journal today, got ripped a new one and said he was done doing Journals for awhile and then locked that journal thread...You can still stop being so boring and dramatic.And you can quit being a complete bitch. Bitch.Lmao look at how mad you are over an internet forum. What a baby.

I will not pay Stardock 50 dollars to basically beta test a game and be a sucker for the next 5-6 months...

I keep seeing comments like this, and I'm left scratching my head. Who says you have to beta test? Just play the game and have fun with it while Stardock gets busy with the updates. That's what I'll be doing. Nobody is going to force you to file detailed error reports if that's what you're worried about.

Quoting solidsmooky, reply 214Quoting dragoaskani, reply 196Quoting solidsmooky, reply 195You guys ever think that Frogboy didn't respond today because... you know.. it's Labor Day here in America and he's probably with his family? Stop being so dramatic.actually genius, he created an AI dev journal today, got ripped a new one and said he was done doing Journals for awhile and then locked that journal thread...You can still stop being so boring and dramatic.And you can quit being a complete bitch. Bitch.

Lmao look at how mad you are over an internet forum. What a baby.

I must say that the forum quality slowly reaches the "quality" of the WoW forums....and that is a bad thing.

Over the coming weeks and months we'll do a lot of hard looking to see how the rough start happened. Maybe I create an environment where people are afraid to tell me the "hard truths". Maybe our QA setup just isn't broad enough. Maybe we had just gotten too close to the project and didn't see things. I don't know. In time, we'll find out.

As a small games developer, I'll bet on being too close. Your internal QA and programmers were too busy in getting the finishing details right to be able to see the bigger picture. It's tunnel vision. I find myself doing things the same way every time and don't notice that while my way works, there are other ways to do it that don't always work, or that I jsut broke. That gets worse when you have a long beta cycle. I would have thought that by adding in Beta Testers later in the cycle that would have helped avoid the issues, but I was wrong.

One thing that might help would be to focus on the out of box experience from the start. That would guarantee a steadier stream of beta testers. I signed up for the pre-order, and later for the shipped limited edition, as soon as I heard about it. The times I tried to get into playing the beta, the limited documentation definitely got in the way. I settled a city, wandered around a bit, then lost interest. I suspect that's why you didn't see more feedback on the overall game.

I thought that you had a great idea on working on the gameplay before the graphics.

Have you thought about doing something like Game Developer Magazine has? A top 5 things that went right and wrong with the project?